Storytelling for Better Sales & Enriching Relationships

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Communication, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Self Development, Self Promotion, Vision, Mission & Purpose

The truth is we all tell stories every day in a myriad of ways in varieties of situations for a variety of reasons.

In ancient times, oral storytelling was the original way we passed down our knowledge and wisdom to the next generation.  Here in Australia, First Nations people call it The Dreamtime.

Storytelling is inherent in human nature. Storytelling is inherent in sales.

Stories told and aligned to the organisation’s purpose and principles, enrich, transform and sell.

Storytelling like Selling, is ubiquitous. 

How well we tell stories, the right stories at the right time for the right reasons to the right people well that’s a whole other story.

This is what I would like to focus on here, especially as it relates to selling.

But I have to set the scene with you first.

Over 10 years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Sandy McDonald, an author, TEDx speaker, and a clarity and storytelling trainer and coach. I was presenting to a group of people at a public seminar on The Psychology of Call Reluctance and the Fear of Self Promotion. Sandy was in the audience. The reason I remember Sandy so well is that a few days post this session, she sent me a blog she had written about me, my topic and the stories I shared and the positive impact it had on her. This had never happened to me before and I was very moved by her narrative.

We connected on Linkedin, chatted every now and then but it wasn’t until early 2019 that we reconnected again on a much deeper level. You see I had just released my book ‘142 Days of Gratitude that changed my life forever’ and posted a chapter excerpt which explained what prompted me to write the book. Sandy reconnected with me again posting her story about what my story meant to her.

What became clear is that our relationship was being forged on storytelling and that storytelling is at the heart of every human relationship. Which is why we are now working together to help other people develop their craft in storytelling to build meaningful connections and forge better relationships that drive better business and create better outcomes personally and professionally.

I’m a storyteller by default because I have never studied the craft of storytelling like Sandy has. For instance, Sandy’s been working with us to Barrett to help us further develop our stories. She’s been working with us on how we tell the story of our 25 years of evolution at Barr

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Why we prioritise Virtues over Values in our work at Barrett

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Life Skills, Optimism

As a consulting and education firm, we go into many organisations and they inevitably have a set of values i.e. integrity, honesty, passion, customer centric/obsessed, courage, and so on.

That’s nice on one level, but how are these values practised every day? How are they demonstrated and enacted?

This is usually the missing piece, which is why my preference is to be virtues driven rather than values driven.

Values and virtues are often seen as synonymous, however, they are quite different.

Simply put, values are goals or ideals or even opinions.

Virtues are behaviours showing high moral standards. Virtues are how we practice and demonstrate …

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Selling deception & enabling criminals – how we’ve hit a new low

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Sales Culture

I’m so furious, but sadly not surprised at all, with the news this week about the unethical, shameful and, frankly, criminal actions of companies such as Westpac and NAB. They are not alone, far from it, but they stand out as current heinous examples of the deception, greed and corruption emanating from the highest levels of business and its devastating impact on people.

Someone asked me the other day if this was the fault of the salespeople who sold the junk insurance or billed dead people, or the fault of compliance teams that ignored 23 million illegal transactions. Yes, they are …

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Gratitude and Materialism

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Buying, Common Ground, Emotional Intelligence, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Life Skills, Sustainability & Environment

Practising gratitude has made me focus on other matters and much less on material things. I have found that I am far less worried about ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ or experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out). I think less about things and more about people.

There is a place for materialism in our world. I appreciate nice things. I am not an ascetic who disavows material goods or worldly possessions. But I don’t feel the need to strive for them madly. I also understand and appreciate how materialism works as a driver for so much of …

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The Holy Trinity of Selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Buying, Collaboration, Common Ground, Communication, Ethics & Values, Opportunity, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Solution Selling

This post has been inspired by my colleague, Ben Shute, who I work arm in arm with bridging the divide between sales and procurement. He wrote about the Holy Trinity of Procurement Skills and so challenged me to do the same for Sales.

Here is my contribution.

The profession of selling requires a whole range of capabilities. It’s hard to know where to begin to define the 3 core elements for sales – the Holy Trinity of Selling.

So I’ll start with the master categories of Knowledge, Skills and Mindset from Barrett’s Sales Competency Dictionary.

Knowledge

Let’s …

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Why Procurement can and should be the epicentre of innovation for business

By / / Business Acumen, Collaboration, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Procurement

Procurement, whether they are aware of it or not, are the epicentre of innovation and leadership of complex systems management within organisations and across the supply chain, or at least they should be.

Their exposure to all elements of the supply chain can and should inform them and in turn other key stakeholders within and outside their organisations of the latest, the easiest, most sustainable, faster, ethical, better ways of doing business.

While they cannot expect to be experts in every area of business, they can and should be experts in systems, managing complexity and managing relationships which is what a supply …

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Want a viable future? Opportunities abound in the Common Good

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Case study, Common Ground, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Opportunity, Optimism, Selling Better, Sustainability & Environment

What type of board member, CEO or sales leader are you?

  • Are you stuck in the day-to-day looking to meet your monthly and quarterly targets, looking to maximise profit, shareholder return and your bonuses?
    OR
  • Are you looking into the future to see what lies ahead ensuring there is a viable sustainable path for all to follow and participate in?

    • In today’s world everything is up for grabs.

    Old institutions are crashing and dying because they held onto the past and failed to adapt.

    Take Thomas Cook Travel as a current case in point. While their leaders were bathing themselves in 29M pounds of bonuses, …

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    Why Progress, NOT Perfection, helps us find Common Ground for the Common Good

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Common Ground, Communication, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values

    “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Voltaire

    “The world is becoming very black and white with people striving for perfection where only the best is acceptable. If we continue down this road, then we will lose everything that is human.” Madeline Stuart*

    “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Winston Churchill

    Our relationship with perfection and progress can be rather fraught.

    In the human world that often promotes perfection or the idealised state, i.e.

    The perfect body

    The perfect marriage/relationship

    The perfect career

    The perfect mind

    The perfect way to be sustainable, and so on…

    We can …

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    How prepared is ‘The Lucky Country’ for tough times?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Collaboration, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Opportunity, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Strategy, Success, Uncategorized

    Ah the good times…

    Ah 28 years of uninterrupted growth…

    Ah Australia, ‘The Lucky Country’*…

    Ah ‘How good is Australia?’…

    Pssst. But don’t talk about the R** word…

    We are indeed fortunate in Australia to have access to many resources, space, and talented people; however, our luck maybe running out if we carry on drinking the ‘recession avoidance’ Kool Aid, carry on with our old ways of managing business and thinking everything is rosy instead of adapting to the array of changes, challenges, and opportunities that are out there in the market place.

    Which is why I couldn’t go past economist Jim Stanford’s comments in Paddy …

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    Debunking myths for the Common Good

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Common Ground, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Resilience, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Success, Sustainability & Environment

    If you had to put a percentage weighting on the following questions what would your answers look like?

  • How much of your individual success so far is solely down to your own efforts?
  • How much of your individual success so far is as a result of the success of your community – where you were born, what family you were raised in, what school you went to, networks, friends, government support, infrastructure and the era in which you live?

    • It’s probably impossible to give definitive answers to these questions; however, I suspect, like me, you are aware that much of our individual success …

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